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Comment by highmastdon | Hacker News Reader

That would be Azure. They have hard limits and they shutdown when you get over the limit I believe

I keep wondering how accurate is that. On one hand implementing that precisely surely must be difficult - if it wasn't, everyone would have it. On the other hand, Azure clearly have issues calculating the bills in real time. Heck, once I kicked off a bunch of large VMs for a day. Once shut down I checked out the billing page - the costs estimates kept increasing every hour!

My hypothesis is that they don't really have it nailed down but given big margins they have they can afford to let you use more resources than you pay for in the end.

I can only speak for my own experience, but it has saved my wallet a couple of times in the past few years. The spending limit is advertised fairly explicitly just that: a customizable limit on your monthly spending [1]. If it doesn't work as intended and you end up with a bill larger than the limit you set up, you'd have a rock-solid case for disputing the extra charge.

[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/spending-limits/

I've been using a $150/mo spending limit on Azure for maybe two years now, and I can go on record stating that it is extremely accurate. They're really good about showing me a breakdown of exactly where every cent I'm spending is going over time, and the second it hits $150, Azure automatically shuts down all related services and stops charging me.

There are a few Azure services to which the spending limit does not apply, but as long as you know what they are then you can choose to use them on your own volition.

Azure tried to charge me 3200 euro/month for inbound traffic

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